Tag: invisibility

Teo

On Thursday January 2nd I passed the milestone of being in recovery for half my life: 23 of my 46 years. I have now been sober three times longer than I drank. Along the way I have learned a great many things (often the hard way). Here is what is coming forward at the moment, but is by no means a complete list.

Nothing is linear: not healing, not harm, nothing. Shedding damage from trauma, including addiction, has not been a process of going from point A to point B. It has been an ever-meandering route that seems to invariably circle back upon itself (often accompanied by my sentiments of “Fuck, I thought I dealt with this already!”). In early recovery everything was new and often magical; hard, but it still felt like I was getting somewhere… Then it seemed like growth came more slowly or not at all. Over the years I have found that to be the way healing unfolds. I honestly don’t know if there is a destination. What I know is that I am at home in my skin more than I thought would ever be possible. I’m wary of seeing myself as a “work in progress.” I distrust the self-help gurus who push “self-improvement.” Healing for me has come from being curious about who is actually here rather than focusing on “what I could become.” Continue reading “What Being Sober for Exactly Half My Life has Taught Me”→

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Alex

The UUWorld’s Family Pages section is always a delightful and beautifully crafted magazine insert that offers stories and resources appropriate for children and people of all ages along a common theme. I’ve always enjoyed reading it, except on one memorable occasion. The Fall 2012 Family Pages section offered a story based on an Aesop’s Fable, entitled “Why Bat Has No Friends.”

In the story, Bat kept switching sides in a war between mammals and birds, and his lack of allegiance resulted in the other animals banishing him to the night, telling him: “Because you could not choose your friends during war, you will not have them during peace. From this day forward, you will only fly at night when everyone else sleeps. You will have no friends among the mammals or the birds.”

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Teo

There are times that I don’t even know how to articulate the pressurized environment that I live in. That it—all of it—is soul crushingly invisible. I often feel like I don’t even know how to begin the conversation. It shows up starkly in hospital/medical settings because I feel like everyone around me is having this experience of an ordinary day and it’s not an ordinary day for me and I’m not an ordinary person and I’m not having an ordinary internal conversation and there’s no room to bring me forward, so I go from being big to small—to big—to small—to invisible, and finally, to not there.

What does it mean to survive the unsurvivable?

Because I feel that’s what I’ve done—every step of the way I’ve survived the unsurvivable. To be born completely without a road map to my own body, to my own mind, to my own soul. To hold in my palm as a little kid a square solid object, but to have everyone else tell me it was round. Adult after adult told me “no, round is your shape.” And I knew—knew what was in my hand, as solid as anything else in my hand could be—THIS thing is square. But I pocketed that square because to show it… they might take it away. Fuck, they might take me away. So I put the square piece in my pocket. And over the years it got worn. From the grasping and the fist-tightening and the finger-rubbing. This talisman I carry in my pocket, my square, in a world that keeps trying to push round on me. If I were to pull that square out into the light of day it would shine. It would shine from the ritual rubbing and rocking—the need to remember that what I feel is real, that what I see is real, that what they tell me is not real. That I can survive the unsurvivable.

I brought it forward at the moment that I and the square might not survive anyway. And time and darkness had made it a tiny thing, but still a solid thing. A loved, solid talisman that I exist. That I survived the unsurvivable.

And I’ve survived the unsurvivable more times than I can tell you. I’m still here. But my still here seems like such a tenuous thing sometimes. A thing that I don’t have a lot of control over. A thing that far too many people seem to have a vote on in addition to myself. I crave the dissolution of a voting block that I don’t understand or support or want.

I sat in the doctor’s office today having that rational conversation that feels so irrational to me. About what my body needs versus what the institution says I need and about how the choices always feel like the lesser of two evils of which both are life threatening. And it’s on these days that I feel like I might rub that square into nothingness, as I rock back and forth, desperate yet again to find a way to survive the unsurvivable.

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Teo

I was at a conference recently where the staggering number of trans folk who have attempted or died by suicide was being discussed. Among these numbers are trans folk who seemingly had a number of “protective factors” in their favor. They were well connected and well known. Did not appear to be isolated. Likely had people to reach out to, but despite all of that, they died.

Amidst these workshops and private conversations, a good friend of mine and I shared our own struggles and how we have been impacted. As is often the case for me, I am having parallel conversations in many other parts of my life. I think the message getting through to me is loud and clear.

There is a profound isolation that I experience but can often feel like it is particular to me. Some of it is definitely personal to my struggle and trauma. I am more painfully introverted than I might appear by my social nature, for example. But I am realizing, through my own personal reflection and in deep conversation, that many people on similar journeys are having the similar experiences of judging their insides by other people’s outsides. My friend at the conference said he often feels uncool, awkward, disconnected, unworthy amidst the crowds of pretty, well-connected LGBTQ activists at this (and other) conferences. It is a painful internal conversation I am familiar with. Continue reading “Preface to Square Talisman”→